Russ Mills is the British artists whose work is a hybrid of traditional hand-made illustration and digital processing. His illustrations are showing dynamically layered portraits focused on human physical and emotional idiosyncrasies, resulting in fascinating distorted forms that have both subtle and extreme character.

“My illustrations begin life as sketches in ink, the tool of choice is the Bic ‘fine’ because it gives me a lot more mileage than more expensive, snootier fine liners that break if you give them too much stick. The sketch is then transported into my MAC and ‘abused’ in photoshop. I use this because of the joy of multiple undo’s, plus it’s the closest I can get to painting without painting. The next stage is to turn these illustrations into big canvases. It’s taken me many attempts to get to a stage where I’m confident enough to attack canvas and leave the relative safety of the computer. As with everything else, it’s a constant learning curve.”